1 Kings 19

1 Kings 19:1-21

THE DIVIDED KINGDOM1 Kings 12-22.IN resuming our study of I Kings, in this 12th chapter we confront a sudden turn in history. The falling of such a man as Solomon is a shock to history itself; a stop so sudden in its impetuous rush, that all society is shaken in consequence, and wonder as to “what next?” takes possession of the people. The text of Scripture does not always take account of time. How many days elapsed between the emptying of David’s throne by Solomon’s death, and the accession to the same on the part of Rehoboam, we are not told; but the pivotal points in this adjustment are made plain, and in the study of them one fact shines clearly forth, namely, that God, the true King of Israel, lived and reigned.Men make their plans and attempt their executions, but history records how the Divine will overrules them all. “The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord” (Proverbs 16:33).Teachers have called attention to the fitness of renaming the fifth Book of the New Testament, and instead of calling it, “The Acts of the Apostles”, declare it, “The Acts of the Holy Ghost”. So in this Old Testament history we seem to be studying the acts of the kings of Judah and Israel, but they are necessarily interpreted in the light of the will of the King of kings, the Lord of Glory. Whosoever sitteth upon the throne, “the Lord God omnipotent reigneth”.Keeping that fact before us, we find these eleven chapters are as full of spiritual suggestions as they are replete with historic incidents, and in the interest of time as it relates itself to the most important truths, I ask your attention to the great opposing personalities that are herein discovered; to Jeroboam vs.

Rehoboam; to Elijah vs. Ahab, and to Micaiah vs. false prophets.

VS. “Coming events cast their shadows before”! We had not finished the 11th chapter when “Jeroboam, the son of Neb at, an Ephrathite of Zereda, Solomon’s servant”, the son of a widow, was lifting his hand against the king, and Ahijah, the prophet, was kindling his ambitions by telling him that the God of Israel would rend the kingdom out of Solomon’s hands and give ten tribes to him. The path, therefore, of Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, was not clear. If he came to the kingdom he must both put down his opponent and placate his people. This dual task requires wisdom, and the subject of the complaint was one with which the counsellors of the old king were alone familiar. When Rehoboam consulted them, they advised moderation in speech and conduct.That is a hard word for ambitious youth.

It is a consent to place a leash on passionate strength. The impetuous prince straightway made appeal to young men and secured from them the counsel his inexperienced spirit craved, namely the counsel of rigor, expressed in. the threat, “my little finger shall be thicker than my father’s loins” (1 Kings 12:10).Men, particularly inexperienced men, commonly accept the counsels that fit with their own plans and desires, and Rehoboam was no exception.But even then, history is not made apart from the will and plan of God.

The very decision of Rehoboam is a part of the prophecy of Ahijah as much so as the perfidy of Judas was prophecy converted into history. Whether God rules in all things may be a question! That God is familiar with all contingencies before they come to pass is not even debatable, and that He presides over history is a settled truth. If Judas betrayed Jesus “that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled”, so also Rehoboam refused wise counsel and accepted the false, that the word “which the Lord spake by Ahijah the Shilonite” should stand. Foreknowledge of human conduct does not render God morally responsible in any measure for what men may do, but it does enable Him to administer all history, and in the end to work out His own will.In the remaining portion of this chapter and running through the 16th of the same book, there are at least three outstanding lessons to be learned by the observant student.The Menace of mistaken counsels! Modern science is proving that all space is a unity, and transmission of sound by the radio is demonstrating that the speech made in America can actually be heard on every continent of the world; and yet more certain still is it that single events influence and affect history more positively and permanently than a spoken word affects the element of ether.If it had been the rule of Rehoboam alone, the result of this consultation with the old men first and with the young men later must still have been important, but with limitations, both in time and effect.

When it is remembered, however, that all human history, to the end of the age, would take color from the decision reached by this young king, then who can measure the importance of wise counsel?The cheapest commodity is advice; that is to say, it is everywhere on exhibit and offered for nothing, but in the end it comes at the greatest conceivable cost or proves itself to have been a most invaluable contribution. In other words, counsel makes or mars.

The world to this hour is suffering from Rehoboam’s mistake, not alone in the division of the sons of Abraham, but since that day, every Gentile nation has felt the evil influence of the same.There is a philosophy, popular at this time, to the effect that it does not make much difference what you tell youth; whether you counsel them concerning the true God in heaven, or tell them that the only God there is is a one-celled animal; whether you lead them to believe that the inspired record of Genesis is true, or scoff their minds into an utter skepticism; whether you impress them with the notion that they are apes—better developed, or the true creatures of God’s own thought, plan and power. There seems to be an impression that the counsel of youth finds no expression in the character of mature men and women—a philosophy as false as the devil who fathers it.I tell you that the counsels of youth determine everything! America, one hundred years from now, will be reaping the harvest of what is sown in the minds of the young men at this moment. If they are taught the truth, they will bless the world. If they are taught a lie, they will curse it! A correct counsel for the young is of too infinite moment to be banished from society through the specious plea of skeptics who cry “Academic freedom”.

Rehoboam was not a beardless boy when they counselled him falsely. He was forty-one years of age, and yet, with even such maturity of years, he succumbed, and the nations have suffered in consequence.

How vastly more deleterious is the effect of false counsel upon the ten and fifteen and twenty year old youth! To teach him falsehoods in the name of “academic freedom” is to flout all sound philosophy, fly in the face of all man’s experience and seek to cover rotting skepticism with a wholesome sounding phrase!But to pass on to another and kindred point, involving chapter 13:The immorality of compromise with false ministers. When in the study of the week we came to a careful consideration of this 13th chapter, we felt exactly as though we were listening to an address in the Convention of the Christian Fundamentalists. Here is a true prophet of God with a Divinely given message, and a commission, and on his way. He is overtaken by a false prophet, a new theologian, a man with a social message, and is asked to sit at meat with him and prove himself a “good fellow”, and is even told that this is the will of the Lord. So the true prophet went back with the false prophet and did eat bread and drink water and the consequence was his repudiation by the false prophet first and a speedy judgment upon his disobedience, executed by his death at the paw of a lion (1 Kings 13:11-32).

The false prophet mourned him, buried and built a tomb to him, and requested of his own sons that he be let to lie beside him when his days are done.How modern it all sounds! The greatest single plea presented by the new theologian of the present is that of “good fellowship”.

They want us to sit at the same table with them; they want us to be silent about our differences; they want us to believe in their human and natural philosophies; that they are as true prophets of God as are the men who come with the revealed Word; and if we yield to their persuasions, compromise with them on the great matters in dispute between us. Deep in their own souls they despise us for our failure to stand for what we knew to be the inspired Word, and yet when we are dead, they will build tombs to us, and ask to be buried at our sides!Meantime, every true minister of the Gospel must determine whether he will yield to such social and philosophic enticements or whether he will take his place with John and in obedience to the revelation made to that prophet, “receive him not into your house, neither hid him God speed: For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds” (2 John 1:10-11).Moving on to chapters 14 to 16, we find another fundamental truth waiting to be apprehended and emphasized, namely,The folly of attempting to purchase acceptable prophecy. Here again the Old Testament times are being duplicated in the New Testament day. The son of Jeroboam fell sick. Ahijah the prophet was consulted by the queen mother, who came in disguise, with gifts and flatteries. The old man’s vision had failed; his eyes were set by reason of age, he could not see; but age does not dim the vision of the Lord, and He revealed her personality to Ahijah and told him both her plan and purpose.

So at the sound of her feet at the door, the old prophet said, “Come in, thou wife of Jeroboam; why feignest thou thyself to be another? for I am sent to thee with heavy tidings” (1 Kings 14:6), and he pronounced judgment upon the king and his house and plainly declared that God would raise up another king over Israel who should cut off the whole house of Jeroboam in justice against the king’s sin; and the prophecy came to pass, and Jeroboam, who had reigned twenty-two years, slept with his fathers, and Rehoboam, son of Solomon, who reigned in Judah, went also to his grave. Singularly enough, the death of these kings is recorded in the same chapter.Then follows the long list of the kings on either side, conflicts, divisions, disasters and judgments (chaps. 15; 16).

There are plenty of people who would like to purchase acceptable prophecy. There are plenty of women who, like Jeroboam’s wife, do not want the truth of God. They want smooth words; they want the prophet to say there is no sickness; they want him to affirm there is no death; they want him even to deny the reality of the same. Such people are perfectly willing to pay a price. They go to the healers, with ten loaves and cracknels and a cruse of honey. False philosophy is a profitable business, but it never yet exempted anybody from peril, never saved a single “scientist” from sin or sickness or death.

It never kept a solitary throne upon a stable foundation and it never will.It is interesting to watch these thrones rock, totter and fall one after another, and to find in every instance a fulfilment of the prophetic word of the Lord. Though heaven and earth shall pass away, not one jot or tittle of all that God has spoken shall fail.But to turn afresh to our text and study another subject.ELIJAH VS.

AHABRead 1 Kings 17-21.The histories of potentates and prophets run parallel in the Books of the Kings. Their views of life are divergent. Elijah and Ahab have little in common beyond the fact that they are contemporaneous, and dwell in the same empire. Elijah’s character so far outshines that of Ahab that we consider the latter only as his conduct is seen in the light of the former. Let us learn again,A pessimistic pronouncement does not disprove the prophet of God. When Elijah the Tishbite comes upon the scene, his first speech is, “As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years” (1 Kings 17:1). No! wonder he was non-acceptable! Unpalatable truths make unpopular preachers.

The men who don’t want to believe in the prophecies concerning the Second Coming of Christ, denounce as pessimists those who faithfully quote and believe God’s word upon that subject, and feel that by the very name they have discredited and discountenanced them. But Revelation pays little regard to what men want. It never consults public opinion that it may suit its speech to the same. It gives out the truth, knowing that in the end the knowledge of the truth is the world’s sorest need. If a famine is coming, it is foolish to shut one’s ears against its prediction and be overtaken by starvation; and, if Christ is coming, it is foolish to repudiate the prophecy, to be shamed by His sudden appearance.When will men learn that the prophet of God is not appointed to repeat the nonsensical platitudes of a Coue, or the filched and false aphorisms of a Mary Baker Eddy? The test of the prophets has not changed one whit in thirty centuries. “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this Word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isaiah 8:20). “When a prophet speaketh in the Name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken” (Deuteronomy 18:22).

Only a few years ago the post millenarians of America were telling us that war was forever over; that in the evolution of the race we had developed a better wisdom and adopted a more righteous way, and they held to scorn those who believed that in “the last days” wars would rend the world; and that “famines, and pestilences” would follow in the wake of them. But the words of Jeremiah the Prophet are the test of all such opponents of the truth, “The prophet which prophesieth of peace, when the word of the prophet shall come to pass, then shall the prophet be known, that the Lord hath truly sent him” (Jeremiah 28:9).The 18th chapter has a further suggestion—The Prophet’s faith and speech is his sufficient self-defense.

In this chapter, Elijah suddenly appears and sends, by the mouth of the Prophet Obadiah, word to Ahab, “Elijah is here!” He had no fear! He dared to face Ahab, the professed king of Israel, confident in the Potentate of Heaven, Israel’s true King. In answer to Ahab’s question, “Art thou he that troubleth Israel”? he set up his defense, “I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father’s house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord” (1 Kings 18:17-18), and by faith he proposed a challenge, involving the entire company of Baal prophets, “The God that answereth by fire, let Him be God” (1 Kings 18:24). We know the result; Jehovah revealed Himself as a God that heareth and answereth prayer, and it was made manifest that Baal was no god at all, and the consequence is the slaughter of the false prophets and the justification of Elijah. What other defense does the true prophet need for his person than he has in the King of kings, the Lord of Glory? And what other defense for his message than that he brings the Word of the Lord?It doesn’t concern me that certain of my brethren write, “We won’t accept the article on the Second Coming of Christ to be found in the Confession of Faith of the Fundamentalists of America.” My concern is in another subject.

Are these articles justified by the Word, and fortified in the sacred sentences thereof? The Lord is the defense of the true minister, and the Word the one and only justification of his message.The endangered prophet has the assurance of Divine care and provision.

The execution of the false prophets stirred Jezebel to desperate decision. The life of Elijah is threatened. A woman’s rage holds nothing in reverence. The fury of Jezebel was a thousandfold more dangerous than the anger of Ahab, and from it Elijah fled; before it, Elijah fainted; in the face of it, Elijah requested for himself that he might die (1 Kings 19).And yet it is impossible to believe that Elijah’s fear and discouragement were the fruits of cowardice. Instead they were the natural reactions of an overstrained spirit; doubtless in part, the result of having slain the false prophets in keeping with the customs of the day, when he had no command from the Lord, and also the protest of an overtaxed mind and body.How grateful readers should be that the whole story is recorded, for with it is also written the story of God’s tenderness and the repeated instances of God’s care. Two visits from an angel, food and drink; a still, small voice; a gracious declaration of the 7,000 fraternal souls.

What refreshing for body, mind and spirit! God truly cares for the whole man, and concerns Himself for him who ministers in His Word.But to conclude our study with the consideration of,MICAIAH VS.

FALSE PROPHETSand to learn from these three remaining chapters, 20 to 22, three important lessons:Ahab wages successful war when he has God’s Word for his warrant. In his battle against Benhadad the king of Syria, he had God’s promise against Syria, “Behold, I will deliver it into thine hand this day; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord” (1 Kings 20:13). The battle was won when that word was spoken. Ahab is no saint. His life and conduct are not acceptable to Jehovah, but he is king of Israel, the ruler over God’s people, and God cares for His own, and when they are at war with sinners, men who do not so much as name God, Jehovah is likely to be on their side.Even poor leadership is not likely to doom a good cause. God does not lose His interest in right, when the evil rule.

A thousandfold better to fight for a just cause with weak leadership than for an unjust cause, superbly led. The boasted scholarship of modernism fills me with no fear in trying to stand before it.

Intellectual superiority, when it sets itself against God, is insanity; and even the great Gladstone of England had no objection to being found in fellowship with the plain people. He was that country’s “Commoner” indeed, and America’s great “Commoner”, William Jennings Bryan, was brainy enough to know that battles will finally be won upon the basis of right and wrong, which is only another way of saying, “If God be for us, who can be against us”? Where God is, there is victory! In the last analysis, the success of an enterprise does not depend upon its human leadership but rests with the Divine favor instead.But to the 21st chapter and learn another lesson— The covetousness of a king may be indulged at the cost of a kingdom. Here we have the record of Naboth’s vineyard, desired by Ahab and refused by its rightful owner. People may be disposed to condemn Naboth for not selling out when his superior proffered him a fair price, but only such as are ignorant of the Word would so speak.

Naboth was more anxious to be loyal to the King of kings than to this petty potentate. He could not forget the Word of the Lord written in Numbers 36:7, “So shall not the inheritance of the Children of Israel remove from tribe to tribe: for every one of the Children of Israel shall keep himself to the inheritance of the tribe of his fathers”; and if Ahab had known the Word of the Lord, he would have been reminded of Eze 46:18, “Moreover the prince shall not take of the peoples inheritance by oppression, to thrust them out of their possession”.Some men have sought to justify Ahab here by saying this was not covetousness, since he offered Naboth a proper price for it, but the defense is insufficient.

The man who so far covets his neighbor’s possessions as to secure his death in order to appropriate the same is an enemy alike of God and of man, and cannot escape the judgment of the Lord. Hence it is written, “In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine” (1 Kings 21:19).Truly, as Joseph Parker says, “When Ahab went down to take possession of that vineyard, a death warrant was awaiting him”. Yea, all the world does move under the hand of God and there are righteous results everywhere operative, and justice is a thousand fold more often meted out than men ever imagine.A defenseless boy may be picked off a train in Florida and a purchasable judge may fine him an amount that he knows the lad does not have, and under the pretense of justice fling him into prison to die at the hands of a flogging brute in the form of a man, and months may pass; no mention of the matter reach the public, and in consequence the criminal chuckles to himself, “My deeds are covered!” Justice, if it sleep, is not dead, and in an unexpected moment it will arouse itself to speak in thunder tones, quickening the whole nation into a united jury that shall pass sentence and demand judgment. God lives!Finally, The temporal interests of God’s Kingdom rest between true and false prophets. The last chapter tells the story of Micaiah, God’s true Prophet, and of a company of men who profess to be prophets, but who are possessed by a “lying spirit”. There were about 400 of these.

Majorities do not settle questions of revelation, not even when they are 400 to 1! The more false prophets you have, the less dependable is their counsel.

For the first time since Solomon’s death, the two kingdoms, Judah and Israel, have a prospect of being united. “The lying spirit” in the mouth of the false prophets did promise the project and assure the united forces of a final victory against the enemy.Alas for the faith of men who follow those who have no sure word of prophecy! Micaiah, the true prophet, may be smitten on the cheek; may be thrust into prison; may be fed with the bread of affliction and the water of shame, but His word will not fail on that account. Throughout the length and breadth of the land, on this beautiful Sunday morning, there are hundreds of true prophets of God whom certain ecclesiastical potentates are seeking to silence. In the Methodist denomination, bishops are refusing them appointments. In the Baptist and Congregational denominations, State Secretaries are setting their faces against them, and are seeking to influence leading church officials to reject them, and cast them out.Suffering is the true prophet’s experience, but better a Micaiah in prison with scant bread and unslaked thirst, than a deceived king marching forth to a battle that shall leave him dead on the field. The after-history of the prophet we do not know.

God for His own reasons left that in obscurity. What matters it?

If, as a free man he breathed his last as Moses did, on Nebo’s heights; if as a martyr he yielded up his spirit as did Stephen in Jerusalem; if as Paul he perished in prison, what matters it? An angel came to claim Moses’ body; Heaven opened to receive Stephen’s spirit; and Paul quit the earth with a triumphant shout! The kingdom is suffering; its king and subjects are still evil in the sight of the Lord; Baal, the false god of worship is an insult to the most High, but the prophet’s spirit is safe!

1 Kings 19:4

ELIJAH DOWN-HEARTED1 Kings 19:4.“But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said,It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers” (1 Kings 19:4).DR. W. calls attention to the fact that strong men often experience a most signal failure at the very points of character in which they were supposed to be most remarkable. He reminds us that Moses was the meekest of men, but it was Moses who “spake unadvisedly with his lips”. St. John was the Apostle of charity, yet in his endeavor to call down fire from heaven, he showed himself to be religiously intolerant. Peter was proverbially an Apostle of courage, yet twice he proved a craven.

Elijah was a man of like passions with these great Apostles of the faith. If there was any respect in which his behavior was most brilliant, it was that of daring.

Like John the Baptist, he dared to rebuke his sovereign; like Paul, he dared to counsel his judge; and like that Apostle, also, he dared to meet a multitude of adversaries and taunt them as weak and characterize their gods as impotent in the presence of his Tehovah.And yet, the text tells us that this strong man fails at his strongest point. This man who had dared to face kings is filled with alarm by the threat of a wicked Queen; this man, who had defied 450 of the priests of Baal, and on Mount Carmel discomfited them, flees at a word from a weak woman, and apparently forgets both his own accomplishments and his God’s power. Like Napoleon, he experiences his Waterloo when the odds against him are much smaller than those he has many a time overcome and conquered. And, since this is true for so many lives, it would seem a sensible study to inquire into the causes that led the flaming Elijah into this fit of despondency; to watch his behavior while in this state, and also to inquire into the way he was delivered out of it, for who of us can tell when the greatest exigency of life will be on, and who has no need to prepare against possible failure? The text presentsTHE CAST DOWNThe causes of this despondency are not far to seek. Going back into the eighteenth chapter, we find Elijah leading an unusual life, and doing unusual things.

When he meets Obadiah, he sends word by him, “Go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here”, as if he had no fear whatever of Ahab. And when Ahab learns of his presence and goes forth to meet him, and asks, “Art thou he that troubleth Israel”? he boldly answers, “I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father’s house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Baalim”.

No sooner does he finish this reproof of Ahab than he sends a challenge to the 450 prophets of Baal, and the 400 prophets of the groves; and, in one day he has both proven these prophets false and slain them at the brook Kishon.That was a great day, but great days are often succeeded by little days. Brilliant days are often succeeded by dark days, and so immediately we find this successful prophet in despair, requesting far himself death, and assigning a reason why the Lord should take away his life. What is wrong with him? Well; a number of things.For instance, he may be physically exhausted. There are many services, which are positively exhilarating at the time, which leave one utterly exhausted when they are finished. That is particularly true of preaching, and especially when the Prophet of God is turning the white light of truth upon the bad behavior of men, as Elijah did upon the life of Ahab; or when he is combating dangerous and soul-destroying errors.

There are only two classes of preachers that have any right to blue Monday— those who fail and those who succeed. The man who fails ought to feel such chagrin as to exhaust him; and the man who succeeds must expend so much of himself, so much of his body, so much of his mind, so much of his spirit, that it requires hours after in which to recuperate and become himself again.

The middle man, the mediocre man, ought to be as hopeful one day as another, and as vigorous one day as another.But this prophet passed from the exhaustion of preaching to that of practical battle, for he acted, at least, as general in seeing to the slaying of every prophet of Baal. While engaged about it he would feel all the enthusiasm, all the unnatural strength that a faithful soldier feels when taking part in heavy firing. But when it had passed, like the soldier, whose hour of battle is over, he will be utterly exhausted and his physical weakness will effect despondency.Science has long recognized the fact that the mind has power over the body. She is equally compelled to admit that the body has power over the mind. It is not an unusual thing to find some faithful servant of God, stricken with disease, falling into despondency; not unusual for the best men and best women, under circumstances of great physical suffering, to become skeptical, and question their own loyalty to the Lord, and God’s love of them, and the value of God’s promises to them.On Sunday I went with a deacon of my church to see a dear woman who for more than seventy years had served God, for more than seventy years had loved God, for more than seventy years had believed that God loved her, and had been able to say, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him”. And yet on that Sunday she doubted, doubted her own conversion, doubted that she had been a subject of Divine affection, doubted that she would be accepted even now; doubted everything!

Why? Because physically exhausted; because suffering had obscured her vision and deadened her faith.

It is the same reason that made John the Baptist send from his dark prison to question Jesus—the very Jesus he had pointed out as “the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world”—“Art thou He that should come? or look we for another”? It was the reason why Christ, when on the Cross, cried, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me”? And yet, God was never nearer to Christ than at that hour, and God was never nearer to John the Baptist than when he was in prison and in despair, and God was never nearer to Elijah than when Elijah sat under this juniper tree, and requested for himself that he might die; and many a saint who, in sickness and suffering, fears that he has lost the Father’s favor, has only lost his physical health, and his mental sanity.When the great Dr. Lyman Beecher was an old man, his mind became clouded, and one day after his son Henry Ward had finished a stirring sermon, the old father made his way up into the pulpit and attempted to speak, but wandered in his thoughts. The famous son laid his hand tenderly upon his father’s shoulder and said to the audience, “My father is like a man who, having long dwelt in an old house, has made preparations for entering a new and larger home. Anticipating a speedy removal, he sent on beforehand much of his soul furniture.

When later, the day of removal was postponed, the interval seemed so brief as to render it unnecessary to bring back his mental goods.” In those beautiful words Beecher sharply distinguished between the failing of faith and the failing of the physique. God grant us ever to be able to do the same.Again, Elijah was not occupied now as was his wont.

He has been a prophet, indeed, accustomed to speak for God, but now he is silenced; his much-loved occupation is gone. There is no change that comes into life that proves such a crucible of a man’s faith as that which takes him out of wonted employment. The man who loves work, and who has been faithful in labors as opportunities have offered, but has come upon a time when there is no place open for his employment, is put to one of severest tests known to this life. I confess to you that when such a man keeps his faith in God, and keeps his courage touching the future, and keeps his affection for his friends, and keeps his character unspotted from the world, I reckon him unquestionably one of God’s very own. The quaint Jeremy Taylor said, “Avoid idleness and fill up all the spaces of thy time with severe and useful employment, for lust easily creeps in at those emptinesses where the soul is unemployed, and the body is at ease; for no easy, healthful, idle person was ever chaste, if he could be tempted! But of all employments, bodily employment is the most useful, and is the greatest benefit for driving away the devil.”That is what Robertson meant when he said, “The law of life is, ‘In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread’.

No man can evade that law with impunity. Like all of God’s laws, it is its own executioner.

It has strange penalties annexed to it. Would you know them? Go to the park, or the esplanade, or the solitude after the night of dissipation, and read the penalties of being useless in the sad, jaded, listless countenances; nay, in the very trifles which must be contrived to create excitement artificially. Yet these very eyes could, (dull as they are,) gleam with intelligence. On many of those brows is stamped the mark of possible nobility. The fact is that the capacity of ennui is one of the signatures of man’s immortality.

It is his very greatness which makes inaction misery, and the greater the man, the nobler the man, the greater his misery when unemployed, and the greater likelihood of his despair.”Suicide is not always a sign of weakness. While it is a sin, it may yet be a sign of greatness plunged to despair, for I do believe that to the noble man oblivion were preferable to endless inaction, to continuous want of employment.

And as I study the social fabric of the state, I am more and more impressed with the thought that if we had statesmen instead of politicians—men who thought more and talked less—we would have some provision made for the adequate and honest employment of every man who honestly wishes to serve his generation.Again, Elijah discovered that his victory had to be won over again. Yesterday when he saw Ahab reproved; yesterday when he saw the false prophets overthrown and their altars deserted; yesterday when he heard Jehovah acknowledged as the only God, he vainly imagined that he had won a victory which was final, that’ falsehood was overthrown once for all, and idols were dethroned forever. Today he discovers that the victory of yesterday only necessitates another battle. If Ahab is successfully reproved, Jezebel is stirred up; and if the false prophets are slain, the queen has determined to take the head of the true prophet; and if Jehovah was worshipped for one short hour, the images” of Baal will surely be brought back again. It is a discovery to take the heart out of him, and yet it is an illustration of a historical truth.The battle is ever to be fought over again. There is never a point in life at which a man can say, “My success is perfect”.

Even Jesus Christ could not cry, “It is finished”, until He did so with His expiring breath, and the Apostle Paul never reckoned his successes sufficiently final to make mention of them until the time of his departure was at hand. Then he said, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith”.

One of the common mistakes of men is about this very matter. We fix our heart upon the accomplishment of some definite thing, and we live for that purpose and long for that event, and half persuade ourselves that when it comes to pass our struggles will be at an end, and beyond that day we will walk among the flowers of ease, and in the fields of perfect content. But all of that is a mirage.Disraeli, the young Jew, a genius of a despised people, aspired to office in the British Parliament, and with his eye on that goal he wrought and wrought until one day he was successful, and for one moment in the first flush of victory felt that his ambitions were fully realized. But not so! Tomorrow, when the Parliament assembles, he will want to speak, and he expects to sway even the older men with his matchless eloquence. But when he stands up to give expression to his thought the words will not come; memory fails him, and in confusion he hears the cries, “Sit down!

Sit down!” Some men would have despaired and been ready to die, but Disraeli realized that he had just begun the battle of life, and so he answered them, “I will sit down now; but the time will come when you will hear me”. And it did come, as all the world knows, and he mastered the very men that did that day make fun of him.

But it was only by battle after battle, and battle after battle.Gladstone was disturbed by the same dream, and one day found himself suddenly elevated to this office. But, alas, that honor was not the end! He had to fight a battle with himself to overcome his Tory education. He had to fight a battle with himself against his Conservatism, and when at last he had made a Liberal of himself—a friend of the common people—he had only commenced. He had yet before him battle after battle against Protection, against High-Churchism, against social aristocracy, against the oppression of the weak. And when at last the Grand Old Man attempted to retire from political activity, there were crying needs that made him restive in his endeavor at rest.Paul also expressed this same thought and had doubtless learned from experience his lesson, when he said,“Brethren.

I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,“I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.“Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded” (Philippians 3:13-15).Going back to the text, there is another suggestion to which I want to call your attention. It is this:THE PROPHET’S PRAYER“He requested for himself that he might die; and said,It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers” (1 Kings 19:4).He speaks as one who expects nothing good from God.

Strange that a man so favored as Elijah should ever feel so. Strange that he should ever forget how God had called him to his prophetic work, how God had cared for him by the widow’s cruse, how God had used him to reprove Ahab, and to overcome false prophets, how God had sent down fire from heaven to consume the burnt sacrifice, etc. But not more strange than your experience and mine. I have had hours, and you have had hours, when, in our great desire for some coveted good, we said to God, “Only grant us this, and we will believe Thee; only answer this prayer and it will prove to us forever that Thou art personal, and that all power is with Thee, and that Thou dost hear Thine own,” and God has answered us and after a short time we have come into another strait and are as unbelieving, as despairing, as though God had never put forth His hand in our behalf. It ought not so to be. Answered prayer provides a good foundation for faith, and the man who does not believe God more firmly for what God has done, is guilty in his unbelief.Shortly before Mr.

Spurgeon’s death, W. T.

Stead asked him, “Have you modified in any way your views as to the efficacy of prayer?” And Mr. Spurgeon cheerily replied, “Only in my faith growing stronger and firmer than ever. It is not a matter of faith with me, but of knowledge, and everyday experience. I am constantly witnessing the most unmistakable instances of answers to prayer. My whole life is made up of them. * * I could no more doubt the efficacy of prayer than I could disbelieve the law of gravitation. Look at my Orphanage! They keep it going at an annual expenditure of ten thousand pounds. Only one thousand four hundred is provided for by endowment; the remaining eight thousand pounds come to me regularly in answer to prayer.

We ask God for the cash and He sends it. That is a good solid material fact, not to be explained away.” It is one characteristic of the men of great faith that they do not forget what God has done.Again, Elijah’s prayer expresses human despondency and not Divine promise. He seems to have forgotten all the promises and to have taken counsel only with his own feelings. It is difficult for a man to do worse than that. No man who proceeds upon the basis of feeling can hope to succeed. No man who trusts the promises can possibly fail.

If one turns to the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, to the history of Old Testament worthies, the honor of each of them is that he believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. You remember Paul says, after mentioning Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, and others, “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them”.

And that were Elijah’s better part, and ours as well.The prayer was faithless also because the Prophet was willing to accept the common lot. “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers”.No man who believes in God has any right to die until he is better than his fathers. No child of this generation has any right to live without making improvement on the generation past. It is our business, I believe, to be better than our fathers. One of the sad things we are compelled to see is the degenerate children of great fathers. One of the pitiful things, as somebody has suggested, is that first families are often like potato vines, “their better part is underground”. One of the occasions for commending the world’s truly great exists in the fact that they have improved upon their progenitors, have excelled even their noble fathers in virtue and wisdom.

Every son in the land should strive to so live that when the time Divinely appointed for his death shall come, his own father may say of him, as the Duke of Ormund said when he stood beside the coffin of his talented and noble boy, “I would rather be the father of that dead son than of all the living sons in England.”Elijah was truly greater than his father, but this faithless prayer does not bring out that fact. It was, therefore, one of his worst hours.

He shall have better hours, and so I invite you to another suggestion of this Scripture.GOD’S ANSWERS ARE IN GRACEI think the impression sometimes prevails that God never hears a faithless petition. But it seems to me that the Scriptures are quite clear upon the fact that God seldom hears a believing petition. For Him to find with men faith as great as a mustard seed is a marvel, and he will remove mountains at the request of it. Undoubtedly, the pitiable condition of a man often pleads with God effectively in spite of his faithless prayers. See how God answers Elijah!First, He feeds and refreshes him. “And as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat * *. And went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights” (1 Kings 19:5; 1 Kings 19:8).God knows where to begin when He would build up a man.

Hunger must be appeased before hopefulness can be excited. I do not believe myself that food and clothing, without the Gospel, do a man much good.

But I do know that the man, made physically comfortable, is in the best state of mind to receive the Gospel of Christ.God answered also by ending his oppressive solitude. He called him out of the wilderness and he called him out of the cave, and he swept him about with the wind, and shook him with an earthquake, and alarmed him with a fire, and having brought him back into sensitive touch with the natural world, He spoke to him by a still small voice. Every man’s solitude is broken when God speaks. No matter if it is Moses in the land of Midian, or Paul in the Arabian desert, or Elijah upon the Mount, the loneliness is gone when God comes, and they hold a communion, never to be forgotten, and have visions which will never fade.You remember that Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, in her volume, “A Singular Life”, speaking of Bayard’s isolation in Windover, says, “Solitude is the final test of character”. And I don’t know but that is true. The man who goes into it without God would find it so oppressive that he will perish; but the man who has it broken up by the voice of God, will bring out of it a wider vision, a richer experience, and a riper character.

I have little doubt that that is why Christ prescribed the closet of secret prayer.Finally, God called him forth to crown him with success. He made him a minister to anoint Hazael king over Assyria, and Jehu king over Israel, and Elisha, prophet in his own room.

And he told him how the enemy should be slain, and how thousands of knees remained unbowed before Baal, and thousands of lips unsullied by the idol’s kiss. A man never likes to feel that his life has been a failure. A man is Divinely inspired, indeed, when he gets from God assurance of success in his undertakings. Elijah had at one time imagined that the great victory on Mount Carmel was the climax of life, but it proved only an incident of Divine intervention and blessing. The crown of life is in the accumulated results, and the count is not all in until the last breath is going from the body and the last earthly blessing has been bestowed, for after all the biggest about life is “God with us!”